In an up-and-coming corner in downtown San Jose, California, a 19-story office building with an average floor slab of 54,000 square meters could kill the urban mood. But Gensler San Francisco had a solution. Six of what the Senior Associate and Technical Director Christopher Payne referred to as “Solar Canyons”, cut vertically into the structure, breaks out the mass of the 200 park and respects the high -rise more for its urban context. “They also offer scaled districts between them and enable access to terraces that enable the business unit of a tenant to have their own character.” The double height terraces or “Sky Bridges” offer each leasable floor three outdoor areas with a view of the city center and the valley and bring natural light to the core.
Interior architecture celebrates Gensler's 60th anniversary with this special section with Q&AS and dozens of projects in four of the practical areas of the company, including cities, health, work and lifestyle. Try it out today.
Inside, Gensler offers inspired environments in the hospitality industry, a warm counterweight to its facade made of minted stainless steel. Ash veneer cladding in the elevator lobby turns into structural ceiling slats, while the indirect lighting grazes a chiseled limestone wall. “As they go up, the surfaces are saturated and more printed,” says Payne. Rift-Cut White Eiche envelops a large part of the fitness studio on the fifth floor; Colorful, curvy furniture – Turquoise nanimarquina Ottomans, an expansive lemmy section of Jardan, Anthony Dickens' Tekiò Circular Pendant Fixture – Add mood in the neighboring social club.
This is not all yet. A total of 1.4 million square foot is the Leed Gold-Certified All-Electric building the first project in California, which uses Speedcore Construction, where prefabricated steel plate panels are double as concrete formwork and structure members. The system shaved for three months under construction and reduced the wall thickness by 20 percent, with valuable square materials added inside.
Project team
Benedict Tranel; Bert Deviterbo; Naomi Motomura; Bob Perry; Melissa O'Rear; Christopher Payne; Stephen Katz; Shuang XU; Anna Pericas; Marwa Istanbuli.